Enterprise software systems receive, generate and store data related to many aspects of a business enterprise. Reporting systems are commonly used to present such enterprise data to users in a coherent manner.
Reporting systems typically allow a report designer to create a report specification, which includes a layout of one or more report elements (e.g., sections, tables, graphs, header, footer, etc.) and associated queries for retrieving data which is to populate the report elements. When a report is requested, these systems provide a populated report based on stored enterprise data and the report specification. If the relevant stored enterprise data changes, a subsequently-generated report will include the changed data.
Conventional reporting systems do not allow report elements or their associated queries to be efficiently shared between different reports. SAP BusinessObjects' Web Intelligence (WebI) allows a report element to be shared among different reports of a same document, but the shared report element must be used in the exact same manner (i.e., with the same style, structure and underlying queries) within the different reports of the document.
Systems are desired to leverage an already-created report element and/or query (hereinafter referred to as Business Intelligence (BI) elements) to create a corresponding BI element within a subsequent report. The subsequent report may be created in a reporting system (WebI, Crystal Reports, Excel, etc.) which is different from the BI reporting system in which the original BI element was created. Moreover, systems are desired in which the corresponding BI element can differ from the original BI element in at least one of style, structure or semantic.